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Ereshkigal, Artifact N/A Soulsteel Daiklave

12-14-2017, 08:03 AM

This is something I put together for my Dragonblooded game that is just waiting for the book to come out to continue, it's gonna be an NPC weapon and I wanted to go ahead and put it down so I could slowly get more comfortable with homebrewing in 3E, something I'm pretty proud of but know I still need work in. It's kind of a rough draft and I think I could do a lot of this a lot better- I think the fluff in particular is pretty weak here-, but I'm gonna go ahead and put it out here because it may give some people some ideas of their own that might be cool. Tell me what you think, if you want.

Comment

First of all, that is a magnificent piece of work. There is a LOT of work and love put into this and I applaud you for it.

I love the Seal concept and system. It's well thought out and implimented well also.

I also get that you wanted this to have a lot of Evocations due to it's N/A quality.

However, I cannot envision the player OR storyteller that would want to try to track nearly 40 different evocations. I mean I can't even track that many charm options.

Each power seems well designed, but I worry that it's themes get drowned out with so many disparate powers. Some of it is just kind of a catch-all of different combat skills. Cutting the # of evocations in half would still be A LOT.

It's your weapon and your game so if you can track it, more power to you. But holy crap, that's a lot of reading to decide what I want to use in any given action.

That said, I don't want my opinion on that to detract from the fact that you really put some excellent work into this.

Comment

First of all, that is a magnificent piece of work. There is a LOT of work and love put into this and I applaud you for it.

I love the Seal concept and system. It's well thought out and implimented well also.

I also get that you wanted this to have a lot of Evocations due to it's N/A quality.

However, I cannot envision the player OR storyteller that would want to try to track nearly 40 different evocations. I mean I can't even track that many charm options.

Each power seems well designed, but I worry that it's themes get drowned out with so many disparate powers. Some of it is just kind of a catch-all of different combat skills. Cutting the # of evocations in half would still be A LOT.

It's your weapon and your game so if you can track it, more power to you. But holy crap, that's a lot of reading to decide what I want to use in any given action.

That said, I don't want my opinion on that to detract from the fact that you really put some excellent work into this.

40 Evocations is definitely a good deal, but I split them into 3 trees specifically because I didn't envision a single person taking all of them even when wielding Ereshkigal- after all, that's 400 EXP worth of Evocations, and games simply just do not generally reach that level of Experience.. For instance, while Kneel is a good investment for any character, there are tons of Exalted games that aren't really going to get any use out of the Domain Charms or the Army ones, or will find them very limited; if you are playing wandering heroes, the idea of spending 40+ exp on charms you won't ever use to get to summon an army of skeletons is very...unlikely. Additionally, a significant number of evocations are purchases allowing you to upgrade a previous charm as a choice; I think this is actively a less intensive choice then each charm actively granting a new and unique power, because it is instead a choice of 'how hard do I want to lean into this'; in that effect I tried to specifically limit the amount of charms that aren't compatible, and instead focused on individual charms offering concepts to interact with different systems instead of overwhelmingly focusing on one thing; this is a problem I have with something like Solar Brawl, where a lot of the charms work intensely at odds with each other because they can't be used together almost at all, that I try to avoid in my own designs.

Rather then looking at the total count, I would track how many different powers you actually gain, and how many would be choices between them versus individual powers. For instance, how many charms in this cascade are fighting against each other for space, versus things useful in different situations, or how many charms are paying to upgrade previous charms. if you look at the Fury tree, for instance, you can see there are a set of 3 charms that are really more like 1 charm with 2 upgrades; the powers of the charm change based on the essence expended through the upgrade charms; you'll see this idea repeated in the Decay tree as well. These significantly the actual thought process related to the charms; if you are using the Starlit Symphony, your questions involve if you want to use either of the two upgrade charms, but if you don't use Starlit Symphony, you can also immediately remove those charms from the possibility of use. Similarly, many charms are 'fire and forget' effects with only 1 use or that are activated and will last for several rounds- the Decay tree highlights this-, where once you activate the charm, you don't have to worry about it until the duration ends, and then you question if you want to use it again.

The fact the Seals are either active or not active on a permanent basis also limits the extra book keeping; you aren't tracking Charge or Heat, which can change from round to round. Unless a very strange thing happens, once you enter a fight your Seal is locked at the number it's at.

And in the end past all of that it certainly comes down to personal preference. I don't have much of an issue tracking this many evocations and in-fact would find it quite enjoyable, but I recognize I"m an outlier of a player.

So I'll wrap it up with suggestions of how to make it a less arduous task that may more appropriately fit into other's GMing style, and it's part of the reason I split them into Trees in the first place. If you find the large number of Evocations too daunting, simply split Ereshkigal into 3 artifacts. Perhaps the smiths devised more plans to break down the rampant sword when it became too dangerous, and split it into a Sword of Fury, Armor of Decay, and a Crown of Domination. From here, you can tie them into a teamwork aspect; each only has two seals, but the seals must still be broken to obtain powerful Evocations, letting you connect 3 of your players with a set of powerful artifacts that encourage them to work together to overcome their challenges.

Comment

First of all, that is a magnificent piece of work. There is a LOT of work and love put into this and I applaud you for it.

I love the Seal concept and system. It's well thought out and implimented well also.

I also get that you wanted this to have a lot of Evocations due to it's N/A quality.

However, I cannot envision the player OR storyteller that would want to try to track nearly 40 different evocations. I mean I can't even track that many charm options.

Each power seems well designed, but I worry that it's themes get drowned out with so many disparate powers. Some of it is just kind of a catch-all of different combat skills. Cutting the # of evocations in half would still be A LOT.

It's your weapon and your game so if you can track it, more power to you. But holy crap, that's a lot of reading to decide what I want to use in any given action.

That said, I don't want my opinion on that to detract from the fact that you really put some excellent work into this.

As one of the games players I'll confirm that Flare not only enjoys writing these mechanics and being able to use them, but that he absolutely juggles them in game too. He's also smart enough to keep most of it 'behind the screen' so to speak so that as players we're not having to internalise everything that's going on, but it does seem to help him model out some pretty intense encounters. He's not got to throw this one at us yet since we're currently waiting on full DB rules for 3e, but even as an outsider I'd love the idea behind the seals. It's a really cool schtick for an artifact to have and I'm jealous he came up with it.

This is also cool to see as a players as it's a first glimpse at him trying to use evocations for weapons like this. One of the big plot points of the game so far have been a set of weapons called the Regalia. Each one of which belongs to one of the Gentes in the game, had their own personality they communicated to their wielder with, and had the potential to utterly transform what the person using them was capable of (while also being fickle enough to pick and choose when they were willing to do it). Most of what they do runs on ST Fiat so it's interesting to see mechanics now that are doing broadly the same sort of thing...although if Flare tries to make me use 40 evocations I'm going to politely ignore most of them